The CN Tower isn’t going to get a name change.
Vehicle Gateway Corp., which operates a website to buy and sell used cars, put out a press release Tuesday claiming it was submitting a $78-million bid to rename the tower and change its lighting scheme.
“We are going to be in direct contact with the Canada Lands Corporation,” said Peter Davies, the director of sales and marketing for Vehicle Gateway.
But Canada Lands Corp., which owns the iconic landmark, responded with a release of its own saying it had never been contacted by Vehicle Gateway and that the naming rights “are note currently for sale.”
“It’s something where we’ve never been contacted by this company,” said spokesman Gordon McIvor. “We were not consulted in any way on this.”
Whether the naming rights could be purchased for $78 million, McIvor couldn’t say.
“We’ve never put a price tag on that because we’ve never contemplated selling the name,” he said.
Vehicle Gateway followed that with another release Wednesday saying it was “disappointed” its plan would “not come to fruition,” and that the company will now “shift their focus to another prominent Canadian landmark in order to further organizational initiatives.
The Wednesday release added a political twist with a quote from Toronto mayoral candidate Giorgio Mammoliti: “Selling the naming rights of city owned buildings would allow the purchaser to oversee the publicity of our buildings, doing a better job of promoting them than the city ever could, and in the process it could potentially save the city millions.”
